Ground Hog Day
Robbie Gamble
Dawn diffuses over snowdrifts
and I make no note of any cloud cover
as the morning unspools, not my job—
we’re several states away from the action:
that fat inscrutable rodent lifted up
by satellite trucks and men in top hats.
So much gets weighed on an animal instinct:
the yearly portent we take a pause for
in our hustle. Tell me this, Phil,
tomorrow is my brother’s birthday—
I should call him, no? Even though
he missed mine two weeks back, and we
haven’t talked in months, no dramatic
falling out, so far as I can tell, only
a meager residue in the extruded tube
of family glue. So, will you scuttle back
down your burrow, Phil? Ahh, what would
you know of the shadow that shrouds me?
Robbie Gamble (he/him) is the author of A Can of Pinto Beans (Lily Poetry Review Press, 2022). His poems have appeared in the Cagibi, Dialogist, Post Road, Salamander, and The Sun. He is the poetry editor for Solstice: A Magazine of Diverse Voices, and he divides his time between Boston and Vermont.